The Mandalorian which debuted on Disney+ in November 2019 was set five years after the events depicted in Return of the Jedi. To achieve the vision of series creator Jon Favreau, Industrial Light & Magic worked with him, series producers, and the production’s visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff to bring together a number of companies that would form a basis for the technology that would allow the series to be produced. ILM, Golem Creations, Epic Games, and technology vendors Fuse Technical Group, and Profile Studios collaborated on developing the ground-breaking virtual production process used on the first season of the series.
After preliminary testing in 2018, the first ILM StageCraft LED Volume was constructed at scale on a soundstage at Manhattan Beach Studios. For season one of the series ILM StageCraft utilized Unreal Engine to perform the real-time render for the 60+ photo-real virtual environments ILM artists created for the series.
All told, the first season contained over 4000 traditional visual effects shots created in post in addition to the real-time effects achieved in the StageCraft Volume. In recognition of impressive work done on the series, The Mandalorian received 15 Emmy Award nominations and won 7 awards. The effects team’s pioneering work was rewarded with the Emmy Award for Visual Effects as well as three Visual Effects Society Awards including the television categories’ top prize.
